conductor Carlo Rizzi

production

Franco Zeffirelli

set designer Franco Zeffirelli

costume designer

Peter J. Hall

lighting designer

Gil Wechsler

revival stage director

J. Knighten Smit

GIACOMO PUCCINIla bohème

general manager

Peter Gelb

music director emeritus James Levine

principal conductor

Fabio Luisi

Opera in four acts

Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based on the novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème by Henri Murger

Wednesday, January 11, 2017 7:30–10:30 pm

The production of La Bohème was made

possible by a generous gift from

Mrs. Donald D. Harrington

The revival of this production is made possible

by a gift from the Metropolitan Opera Club

The 1,304th Metropolitan Opera performance of

Wednesday, January 11, 2016, 7:30–10:30PM

GIACOMO PUCCINI’S

la bohème

in order of vocal appearance

conductor

Carlo Rizzi

marcello Alessio Arduini

rodolfo Michael Fabiano

colline Christian Van Horn

schaunard Alexey Lavrov*

benoit Paul Plishka

mimì Ailyn Pérez

parpignol Daniel Clark Smith

alcindoro Paul Plishka

muset ta Susanna Phillips

customhouse sergeant Yohan Yi

customhouse officer Joseph Turi

2016–17 season

* Graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program

Yamaha is the Official Piano of the Metropolitan Opera.

Latecomers will not be admitted during the performance.

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Met TitlesTo activate, press the red button to the right of the screen in front of your seat and follow the instructions provided. To turn off the display, press the red button once again. If you have questions, please ask an usher at intermission.

Chorus Master Donald PalumboMusical Preparation Donna Racik, John Keenan,

Joshua Greene, and Liora MaurerAssistant Stage Director Gregory KellerStage Band Conductor Gregory BuchalterItalian Coach Hemdi KfirPrompter Donna RacikMet Titles Sonya FriedmanChildren’s Chorus Director Anthony PiccoloAssociate Designer David ReppaScenery, properties, and electrical props constructed and

painted in Metropolitan Opera ShopsCostumes executed by Metropolitan Opera Costume

DepartmentWigs and Makeup executed by Metropolitan Opera

Wig and Makeup DepartmentLadies millinery by Reggie G. AugustineMen’s hats by Richard TautkusAnimals supervised by All-Tame Animals, Inc.

This performance is made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Before the performance begins, please switch off cell phones and other electronic devices.

A scene from Puccini’s La Bohème

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A scene from Nabucco

PHOTO: MARTY SOHL / METROPOLITAN OPERA

� e Metropolitan Opera is pleased to salute

Bloomberg Philanthropies in recognition of its

generous support during the 2016–17 season.

2016–17 season

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Synopsis

Paris in the 1830s

Act I A garret

Pause

Act II The Café Momus, in the Latin Quarter

Intermission (aT APPROXIMATELY 8:35 PM)

Act IIIThe Barrière d’Enfer, a toll-gate on the edge of Paris

Intermission (aT APPROXIMATELY 9:35 PM)

Act IVThe garret

Act IIn their Latin Quarter garret, the near-destitute artist Marcello and poet Rodolfo try to keep warm on Christmas Eve by feeding the stove with pages from Rodolfo’s latest drama. They are soon joined by their roommates—Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician, who brings food, fuel, and funds he has collected from an eccentric student. While they celebrate their unexpected fortune, the landlord, Benoit, comes to collect the rent. After making the older man drunk, they urge him to tell of his flirtations, then throw him out in mock indignation at his infidelity to his wife. As his friends depart to celebrate at the Café Momus, Rodolfo remains behind to finish an article but promises to join them later. There is another knock at the door—the visitor is Mimì, a pretty neighbor, whose candle has gone out on the stairway. As she enters the room, she suddenly feels faint. Rodolfo gives her a sip of wine, then helps her to the door and relights her candle. Mimì realizes she lost her key when she fainted, and as the two search for it, both candles are blown out. Rodolfo finds the key and slips it into his pocket. In the moonlight, he takes Mimì’s hand and tells her about his dreams. She recounts her life alone in a lofty garret, embroidering flowers and waiting for the spring. Rodolfo’s friends are heard outside, calling him to join them. He responds that he is not alone and will be along shortly. Happy to have found each other, Mimì and Rodolfo leave, arm in arm, for the café.

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Synopsis CONTINUED

Act IIAmid the shouts of street hawkers near the Café Momus, Rodolfo buys Mimì a bonnet and introduces her to his friends. They all sit down and order supper. The toy vendor Parpignol passes by, besieged by children. Marcello’s former sweetheart, Musetta, makes a noisy entrance on the arm of the elderly but wealthy Alcindoro. The ensuing tumult reaches its peak when, trying to gain Marcello’s attention, she loudly sings the praises of her own popularity. Sending Alcindoro off on a pretext, she finally falls into Marcello’s arms. Soldiers march by the café, and as the bohemians fall in behind, the returning Alcindoro is presented with the check.

Act IIIAt dawn on the snowy outskirts of Paris, a customs official admits farm women to the city. Guests are heard drinking and singing within a tavern. Mimì arrives, searching for the place where Marcello and Musetta now live. When the painter appears, she tells him of her distress over Rodolfo’s incessant jealousy. She says she believes it is best that they part. Rodolfo, who has been asleep in the tavern, comes outside. Mimì hides nearby, though Marcello thinks she has left. Rodolfo tells his friend that he wants to separate from Mimì, blaming her flirtatiousness. Pressed for the real reason, he breaks down, saying that her coughing can only grow worse in the poverty they share. Overcome with emotion, Mimì comes forward to say goodbye to her lover. Marcello runs back into the tavern upon hearing Musetta’s laughter. While Mimì and Rodolfo recall past happiness, Marcello returns with Musetta, quarreling about her flirting with a customer. They hurl insults at each other and part, but Mimì and Rodolfo decide to remain together until spring.

Act IVMonths later in the garret, Rodolfo and Marcello, now separated from their girlfriends, reflect on their loneliness. Colline and Schaunard bring a meager meal. To lighten their spirits, the four stage a dance, which turns into a mock duel. At the height of the hilarity, Musetta bursts in with news that Mimì is outside, too weak to come upstairs. As Rodolfo runs to her aid, Musetta relates how Mimì begged to be taken to Rodolfo to die. She is made as comfortable as possible, while Musetta asks Marcello to sell her earrings for medicine and Colline goes off to pawn his overcoat. Left alone, Mimì and Rodolfo recall their meeting and their first happy days, but she is seized with violent coughing. When the others return, Musetta gives Mimì a muff to warm her hands and prays for her life. Mimì slowly drifts into unconsciousness. Schaunard realizes that she is dead, and Rodolfo is left desperate.

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Giacomo Puccini

La Bohème

In Focus

Premiere: Teatro Regio, Turin, 1896La Bohème, the passionate, timeless, and indelible story of love among young artists in Paris, can stake its claim as the world’s most popular opera. It has a marvelous ability to make a powerful first impression (even to those new to opera) and to reveal unsuspected treasures after dozens of hearings. At first glance, La Bohème is the definitive depiction of the joys and sorrows of love and loss; on closer inspection, it reveals the deep emotional significance hidden in the trivial things—a bonnet, an old overcoat, a chance meeting with a neighbor—that make up our everyday lives. Following Puccini’s breakthrough success with Manon Lescaut three years earlier, La Bohème established him as the leading Italian opera composer of his generation.

The CreatorsGiacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was immensely popular in his own lifetime, and his mature works remain staples in the repertory of most of the world’s opera companies. His operas are celebrated for their mastery of detail, sensitivity to everyday subjects, copious melody, and economy of expression. Puccini’s librettists for La Bohème, Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906) and Luigi Illica (1857–1919), also collaborated with him on his next two operas, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Giacosa, a dramatist, was responsible for the stories, and Illica, a poet, worked primarily on the words themselves. The French author Henri Murger (1822–1861) drew on his own early experiences as a poor writer in Paris to pen an episodic prose novel and later a successful play, Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, which became the basis for the opera.

The SettingThe libretto sets the action in Paris, circa 1830. This is not a random setting, but rather reflects the issues and concerns of a particular time and place. After the upheavals of revolution and war, French artists had lost their traditional support base of aristocracy and church and were desperate for new sources of income. The rising bourgeoisie took up the burden of patronizing artists and earned their contempt in return. The story, then, centers on self-conscious youth at odds with mainstream society, feeling themselves morally superior to the rules of the bourgeois (specifically regarding sexual mores) and expressing their independence with affectations of speech and dress. The bohemian ambience of this opera is clearly recognizable in any modern urban center. La Bohème captures this ethos in its earliest days.

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The MusicLyrical and touchingly beautiful, the score of La Bohème exerts a uniquely immediate emotional pull. Many of its most memorable melodies are built incrementally, with small intervals between the notes that carry the listener with them on their lyrical path. This is a distinct contrast to the grand leaps and dives that earlier operas often depended on for emotional effect. La Bohème’s melodic structure perfectly captures the “small people” (as Puccini called them) of the drama and the details of everyday life. The two great love arias in Act I seduce the listener, beginning conversationally, with great rushes of emotion seamlessly woven into more trivial expressions. In other places, small alterations to a melody can morph the meaning of a thought or an emotion in this score. A change of tempo or orchestration can turn Musetta’s famous, exuberant Act II waltz into the nostalgic, bittersweet tenor–baritone duet in Act IV, as the bohemians remember happier times. Similarly, the “streets of Paris” theme is first heard as a foreshadowing in Act I, when one of the bohemians suggests going out on the town, hits full flower in Act II, when they (and we) are actually there, and becomes a bitter, actually chilling memory at the beginning of Act III when it is slowed down and re-orchestrated.

Met HistoryLa Bohème had its Met premiere while the company was on tour in Los Angeles in 1900. Nellie Melba sang Mimì and improbably added the mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor as an encore after the final curtain (a practice she maintained for several other performances). This production lasted until 1952, when it was replaced by one designed by Rolf Gerard and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who insisted his name be removed after a disagreement with some of the singers. The current spectacular production by Franco Zeffirelli was unveiled in 1981 with an impressive cast led by Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto, José Carreras, Richard Stilwell, and James Morris, with James Levine conducting. La Bohème was presented at the Met in 59 consecutive seasons after its first appearance and has been seen in all but nine seasons since 1900, making it the most performed opera in company history.

In Focus CONTINUED

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Program Note

“Friends” might have been an apt title for Puccini’s opera about the bohemians of the Latin Quarter. A beloved portrayal of the joys and hardships of ordinary people, it was neither the beginning nor the

end of the literary and theatrical journey of Mimì, Rodolfo, Marcello, Musetta, Schaunard, and Colline. The bohemians first appeared in a series of short stories that Henri Murger published in the Parisian journal Le Corsair between 1845 and 1849. Murger then collaborated with Théodore Barrière on a play, La Vie de Bohème, which premiered in November 1849 at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, and soon after gathered his stories into a novelized version published in 1851 as Scènes de la Vie de Bohème. Not surprisingly, by the 1890s, an era in which the arts found new inspiration in the lives of the working class (Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana stands out as an operatic example), Murger’s characters seemed perfectly suited for the operatic stage. Not one, but two composers stepped up to the task—Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo (of Pagliacci fame), who feuded openly about who had the idea first. Resolution came in the form of two operas, with the same title, premiered a year apart: Puccini’s, with a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, in Turin in 1896, Leoncavallo’s in Venice, 15 months later. To this day, directors, filmmakers, and composers continue to be inspired by Murger’s friends. Constantin Stanislavski staged Puccini’s opera in a famous production at the Bolshoi Theater in 1927. Baz Luhrmann brought it to Broadway in 1992 and then conflated the story with that of La Traviata in his 2001 film, Moulin Rouge!. The opera itself was filmed three times, in 1965 (by Franco Zeffirelli and Herbert von Karajan), 1988, and 2008 (starring Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón). And its story was retold as a rock musical set in 1990s New York in Jonathan Larson’s Rent.

In contrast to the remarkable amiability of the characters in La Bohème, the working relationship of the opera’s creators was vexed. Early in his career, Puccini revealed himself to be a remorseless perfectionist, at his most extreme in Manon Lescaut, which took a total of seven librettists (including publisher Giulio Ricordi and the composer himself) to lift it off the ground. The labor of bringing La Bohème to the stage, however, was marked less by issues of having too many collaborators than by a passionate struggle among Puccini, his two librettists, and Ricordi. Illica had finished the original scenario for the opera by 1894, but the months preceding that watershed moment had been a painful succession of arguments about the Latin Quarter scene and a now-discarded act set in a courtyard. On October 6, 1893, Giacosa, feeling strangled by Puccini’s demands and ready to throw in the towel, wrote to Ricordi claiming “artistic impotence.”

How remarkable, then, that despite such creative discord behind the scenes, La Bohème unfolds so seamlessly and effortlessly from its opening notes. There is no prelude, and the music erupts from the depths of the orchestra on a single spring-loaded motive that defines the instability of the bohemians’ lives.

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The curtain rises swiftly on a scene in medias res, the first in a series of episodes that tumble forth in quick succession, as characters improvise ways to overcome hardship: Marcello works on his painting, Rodolfo burns the pages of his play to heat the garret, Schaunard brings home the dinner, and the landlord, Benoit, is tricked out of his rent.

What is the secret to such utter freshness and spontaneity? One answer is that Puccini keeps the story moving, finding musical expression appropriate to the characters and their station in life. For this composer, “real” people simply could not sing in the formal Italian verse and musical structures that had governed so many Italian operas that came before his. Instead, he advances a more energetic and naturalistic repartee in which lyrical moments arise seamlessly out of the drama. That is exactly what happens in the second half of Act I, as the brief, intimate contact of hands groping in the dark for a lost key moves Rodolfo and Mimì to reveal something of themselves to one another in two of the opera’s greatest arias, “Che gelida manina” and “Mi chiamano Mimì.”

The tone shifts again, though, as it is Christmas Eve and the new lovers must join friends in the Latin Quarter, in a square teeming with a “vast and motley crowd of citizens, soldiers, serving girls, children, students, seamstresses, gendarmes, etc.,” as the libretto says. In the hands of a lesser composer, Rodolfo, Mimì, and their companions might have been lost in such tumult. But here Puccini exercises his particular genius for manipulating large numbers of people and devising transparent musical textures that shine a spotlight on the characters he wants us to see and hear. At the center of it all is Musetta, who delivers a “siren song” (the waltz “Quando m’en vo’”) that Marcello cannot resist. As he falls into her arms, the bill arrives, and the bohemians disappear into the crowd.

One of the most familiar—and original—scenes of La Bohème is Mimì’s death, which differs significantly from the traditional “curtain deaths” of earlier operas. A good example for comparison is La Traviata, whose consumptive heroine, Violetta, is frequently thought of as a model for Mimì. Violetta, surrounded by loved ones, dies with a cry of renewed joy, a tonic chord, and a final curtain in fortissimo dynamics. When Mimì passes away, none of the characters on stage even notices that she is gone until it’s too late. She has no final spasm, nor does she collapse into a pair of loving arms. She sings no high notes; her friends have busied themselves by heating medicine, adjusting lights, and plumping pillows; there is no vigil, no stage directions that communicate the exact moment of her death or how the singer is to enact it. The libretto does not even mark it with the perfunctory phrase that defines dozens of melodramatic deaths in opera: “she dies.” The only material indicator is in Puccini’s autograph score, where, in the margins next to the measures of the death music, he ironically drew a skull and crossbones. A highly choreographed “good death” was not to be for the likes

Program Note CONTINUED

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of his poor seamstress. Mimì only nods her head, “as one who is overcome by sleep,” and thereafter the libretto notes only “silence.” In the score, a slowing of the tempo leads to a “lunga pausa” just before the key changes from D-flat major to B minor and the tempo to Andante lento sostenuto. Puccini adds a subtle detail in the single cymbal struck in quadruple pianissimo with a mallet; the diffuse sound seems to originate from and fade into the ether. Mimì is gone, and the final curtain belongs to Rodolfo.

—Helen M. Greenwald

Helen M. Greenwald is chair of the department of music history at New England Conservatory and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Opera.

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The Cast

this season La Bohème at the Met, Rigoletto in Amsterdam, and a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna at the Paris Opera.met appearances More than 150 performances since his 1993 debut conducting La Bohème, including La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto, L’Elisir d’Amore, Madama Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermoor, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Nabucco, Norma, Aida, and Turandot.career highlights He is Conductor Laureate of the Welsh National Opera, where he had two tenures as Music Director, 1992–2001 and 2004–08. Since launching his conducting career in 1982 with Donizetti’s L’Ajo Nell’Imbarazzo, he has performed almost 100 different operas, a repertoire rich in Italian works but also well stocked with the music of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Britten and Janácek. Has has conducted at La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Bavarian State Opera, among others. Recent seasons have included Guillaume Tell and Mosè in Egitto at Welsh National Opera; Luisa Miller in Zurich; La Fanciulla del West at Deutsche Oper Berlin; Un Ballo in Maschera at Brussels’s La Monnaie; Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, and Tosca at La Scala, and Nabucco at Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Carlo Rizziconductor (milan, italy)

this season Mimì in La Bohème at the Met and at La Scala, Violetta in La Traviata at La Scala and the Berlin Staatsoper, and Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Oviedo, Spain. met appearances Musetta in La Bohème and Micaëla in Carmen (debut, 2015).career highlights Mimì at La Scala and the Los Angeles Opera; Violetta at Covent Garden, the San Francisco Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Zurich Opera, and in Barcelona; Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore at the Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, and Washington National Opera; The Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro and Desdemona in Otello at Houston Grand Opera; the title role of Manon in Dallas; Marguerite in Faust at the Dresden State Opera; Juliette in Roméo et Juliette in Santa Fe; Norina in Don Pasquale in Barcelona; Liù in Turandot at Covent Garden; Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccanegra at La Scala; Gilda in Rigoletto in Hamburg; Alice Ford in Falstaff at the Glyndebourne Festival; and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Ravinia Festival. She was a 2012 winner of the Richard Tucker Award.

Ailyn Pérezsoprano (chicago, illinois)

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this season Marcello in La Bohème at the Met; Guglielmo in Così fan tutte at Covent Garden; Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Dandini in La Cenerentola, and Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore at the Vienna State Opera; Papageno in Die Zauberflöte in Florence; and Dandini at the Paris Opera.met appearances Schaunard in La Bohème (debut, 2014).career highlights Leporello in Don Giovanni and Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera; Marcello, Leporello, and Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Le Nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera; Masetto in Don Giovanni, Schaunard, and Guglielmo at the Salzburg Festival; the title role of Don Giovanni and Guglielmo in Venice; Silvio in Pagliacci at the Salzburg Easter Festival; Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Schaunard in Rome; Schaunard at Covent Garden; Silvano in Un Ballo in Maschera at La Scala; and Guglielmo at the Bavarian State Opera.

Alessio Arduinibaritone (desenzano, italy)

this season Clémence in L’Amour de Loin and Musetta in La Bohème at the Met, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni for her debut with the Zurich Opera, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare with Boston Baroque, and solo recitals at Carnegie Hall and in Boston and Washington, D.C.met appearances Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Antonia/Stella in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Donna Anna, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and Musetta (debut, 2008).career highlights Recent appearances have included Juliette in Roméo et Juliette with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Hanna in The Merry Widow with Boston Lyric Opera, Donna Anna in Frankfurt, Arminda in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera at the Santa Fe Opera, and the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro in concert in Lisbon with the Gulbenkian Orchestra. She has also sung the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, and Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire at Lyric Opera of Chicago; Lucia with the Minnesota Opera; Pamina in Barcelona, and the Countess with Santa Fe Opera and Dallas Opera. She was the 2010 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman.

Susanna Phillipssoprano (huntsville, alabama)

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BIZET

CARMENJAN 19, 23, 27, 31 FEB 3, 7, 11mat, 15, 18eve

Sophie Koch and Clémentine Margaine alternate as Bizet’s immortal heroine. Tenor Marcelo Álvarez is her hapless soldier Don José, and Maria Agresta is the devoted Micaëla. Asher Fisch, Louis Langrée, and Derrick Inouye share conducting duties.

Tickets from $25

metopera.org

PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

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The Cast CONTINUED

this season Rodolfo in La Bohème, Alfredo in La Traviata, the 50th Anniversary Gala, and the National Council Grand Finals Concert at the Met; the title role of Faust for his debut with Houston Grand Opera; and Jean in Massenet’s Herodiade with Washington Concert Opera. met appearances Alfred in Die Fledermaus, Raffaele in Stiffelio (debut, 2010), and Cassio in Otello.career highlights Recent performances include Rodolfo in Luisa Miller and the title role of Don Carlo at San Francisco Opera, Lenski in Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden, Jacopo in I due Foscari in Madrid, the Duke in Rigoletto at the Paris Opera, and Rodolfo in La Bohème in Zurich. He has also sung Rodolfo in La Bohème at the San Francisco Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and Deutsche Oper Berlin; Faust at the Paris Opera, Dutch National Opera, and Opera Australia; Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Paris Opera; Alfredo at the Glyndebourne Festival; and Gennaro in Lucrezia Borgia at the San Francisco Opera and English National Opera. He was a 2014 winner of the Beverly Sills Artist Award and the Richard Tucker Award and a 2007 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions.

Michael Fabianotenor (montclair, new jersey)

this season Schaunard in La Bohème at the Met, Silvio in Pagliacci in Zurich, Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale at the Atlanta Opera, and Tsarevich Afron in The Golden Cockerel in Madrid. met appearances Silvio, Dr. Malatesta, Dominik in Arabella, Flemish Deputy in Don Carlo (debut, 2013), Herald in Otello, Yamadori in Madama Butterfly, and Huntsman in Rusalka.career highlights The title role of Rachmaninoff’s Aleko with Opera Carolina; Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette at the Festival Internacional de Ópera Alejandro Granda in Lima, Peru; Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for his debut at Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre; Robert in Iolanta and Silvio at the Mikhailovsky Theatre; the title role of Eugene Onegin at Germany’s Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg Festival and on tour with the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Japan; Donald in Billy Budd in Santiago; and Flemish Deputy at the Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse. He is a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

Alexey Lavrovbaritone (pechora, russia)

BIZET

CARMENJAN 19, 23, 27, 31 FEB 3, 7, 11mat, 15, 18eve

Sophie Koch and Clémentine Margaine alternate as Bizet’s immortal heroine. Tenor Marcelo Álvarez is her hapless soldier Don José, and Maria Agresta is the devoted Micaëla. Asher Fisch, Louis Langrée, and Derrick Inouye share conducting duties.

Tickets from $25

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PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

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The Cast CONTINUED

this season Benoit and Alcindoro in La Bohème at the Met.met appearances He has sung more than 1,500 performances of 83 roles with the Met since his debut in 1967, including Colline in La Bohème in the first Live from the Met telecast in 1977 and the title role of Falstaff (which marked his 25th anniversary with the company).career highlights He has appeared regularly with major opera companies in such North American cities as San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Baltimore, Houston, Pittsburgh, Dallas, San Diego, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. In Europe, he has performed at Covent Garden and La Scala and in Geneva, Munich, Hamburg, Barcelona, Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Concert appearances include engagements with leading orchestras in New York, Houston, Toronto, Minnesota, and Boston.

this season Colline in La Bohème at the Met, Narbal in Les Troyens and Escamillo in Carmen at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Oroveso in Norma at the Dallas Opera, and Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor and Melisso in Alcina with Santa Fe Opera.met appearances Pistola in Falstaff (debut, 2013).career highlights Recent performances include Alidoro in La Cenerentola and Frère Laurent in Roméo et Juliette at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Escamillo with the Canadian Opera Company, the Prefect in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix for his debut at the Rome Opera, Publio in La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Oroveso and Colline with the San Francisco Opera, the Four Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann with the Bavarian State Opera, Zaccaria in Nabucco with the Seattle Opera, and Colline with the San Diego Opera. He has also sung Timur in Turandot and the Four Villains with the San Francisco Opera, Claudio in Agrippina at Boston Lyric Opera, and Colline at the Santa Fe Opera and LA Opera.

Paul Plishkabass (old forge, pennsylvania)

Christian Van Hornbass (rockville centre, new york)